Famous Lady

My sailboat is called Felicity Jane after my friend Jane who has had such a wonderful impact on my self-esteem and made me feel loved and appreciated by the younger generation.
I didn't like the name on the boat when I got her, Felicidad. I'm not any of those espanish flavors and I am very sensitive about the gender issues and that's I think masculine, if it is not why does it end in dad?
So I changed it with a bit of sandpaper, sanding out the offending d-a-d and making the t and then y on the end with a little  bottle of Testors white enamel, so it said Felicity  and then later on , after going through some bridges where you have to call on the radio and then identify your vessel for the bridge operator and I thought it was too many sibilants so I added the Jane to make the sound balance better. Felicity Jane.
Turns out there was a boat way back in the 50s called Felicity Ann which an Englishwoman, Ann Davison, sailed, albeit clumsily, across the Atlantic becoming the first woman to make the crossing solo. There was a guy recently whose boat sank off the Canaries and drifted to Barbados in a leaky round life-raft faster than Ms Young in her 24 foot wooden sloop. To be fair, this was in the days before self-steering gear, and Felicity Ann wouldn't track with the helm tied to the jib so Miss Davison sailed during daylight and hove-to at night to sleep.

When you anchor near the fairway you are supposed to hang a ball or anything resembling a ball in the rigging to signify your situation. I used to stuff my dirty clothes in sail bag and hang that but then I found an actual float/ball/fender on the beach downtown at waterfront park. If you blow this up you will see the white ball in the rigging. I maybe should have hung up the orange one. I dunno. Whatever.

A tragic figure, having watched her first husband perish when their 70 ft Ketch Reliance  smashed on the rocks at the base of Portland Bill,  she made a splash with the book about her misadventures, "My Boat Is So Small", sold the sloop, bought an outboard motor powered cabin cruiser and circumnavigated eastern North America, from Florida up the east coast, and I am assuming the Intracoastal Waterway, to the St Lawrence and the the lakes to Chicago and back down the river to Nola and the Florida again, and another book. Inspiring stuff.
So I am in good company